weekly weigh in’s. Year 1, weeks 13-16
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Mr Green with a month's worth of landfill rubbish
I need to get back into my weekly weigh ins, I’ve been a bit of a weigh in slob recently.
This week then, we have a month’s worth of landfill waste to go through.
If you’re new to the site we have a couple of goals for 2009.
First we aim to put out less than 100 gms of landfill waste per week. We achieve this by reducing, reucing, recycling and composting all that we can.
Our second goal is to get through the year without having our dustbin emptied. We have an old fashioned metal dustbin which holds 100 litres.
So far it’s not looking good. We are more than 3/4 of the way through our bin, but we’re trying our best to compact things are reduce even more as the year progresses.
A few weeks ago, Little miss green vowed to swap her daily packs of crisps for 1 large bag a week. It’s working out really well and reducing our waste a little bit. At this stage, to coin a phrase, ‘every little helps’.
In the landfil bin this week we have:
- 2 large crisp bags
- chocolate digestive pack
- 2 piece cling film from polystyrene trays
- bubbles bottle
- non working cd
- assorted plastic packaging from tools / components from LED project
- plastic lid from honey jar
- 2 seals from soya sauce bottles
- 1 coffee pack
- 3 cereal bar
- 4 lentil pack
- toothpaste tube
- 2 ryvita packs
- 5 dried fruit bags
- 1 dead pen
- 2 polystyrene trays
- old plastic and metal tin opener
- hard plastic wrap from new tin opener
- bread rolls pack
- cheese wrapping
Altogether, it comes to 278 gms. For four weeks, that is excellent, although of course, we did have a zero waste week last week AND we were on holiday for 3 days.
Still, I’m very pleased with that as the tin opener alone weighed 107 gms.
How have you been getting on? Any landfill layabouts we need to know about?
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Well, this week I rescued a flat monitor and dvd drive from landfill – both in working order but had been replaced and the original owner couldn’t be bothered to use freecycle (“Too much hassle sorting out strangers coming to collect stuff, what if they’re horrible or don’t turn up?”) So I took them and they’re both happily part of my ‘puter now. Installing them did motivate me to do the desk tidy and move that I’ve been putting off too – so desk all clean (soap nut solution, of course, with a drop or three of lemon grass essential oil – lovely) With the desk move I made space to fit in the freecycled two drawer filing cabinet and I put all my paperwork in there, along with some other ‘puter spares that I need to have a think about.
Oh and diverted my old, not working very well, scanner/copier/printer via freecycle too.
Hi Mrs Green,
A fine total considering the non-recurring items, it is good to see the weekly totals returned since readers can see what can be achieved with the correct approach to reducing plastic waste. Your year target is still possible though the Festive Season looms on the horizon.
On a different note, A recent comment by Liz Goodwin, at WRAP, was very informative and confirms the experiences of Mrs Average, myself and possibly your family as well. She stated that England had greater potential for reprocessing waste, while in Scotland and Wales the focus was purely on Zero Waste. I think this is absolutely accurate from my experience, where Zero Waste means avoiding plastic waste to the max, as the only option. Mrs A’s greater range of recyclable plastics appears to fit the comment as well. What is your view?
Great going Mrs Green – My wheelie bin is close to being put out as well and it’ much bigger than your more slim-line number. I’m really pleased with the progress this year though. Re the note from John; it really is uplifting to see the direction that society is moving towards regarding waste. Where it is often seen as a complex system currently I really feel that over the next decade consumers and businesses will be able to benefit from more streamlined systems. P.S. Great to see Sarah’s rescue mission. Our monitor broke recently. Even though we’ve got a new one, we’ve kept the old one for repair for future use. 😀 x
WOW, 278g for FOUR weeks!! This is truly excellent!!
Well, I’m sort of COMFORTED you’ve been having a rough time too.. We’re not doing so well, and in the summer I almost preferred to not know what the ‘real deal’ was (bags went suspiciously quickly, though it was never a full bag a week, and mom swears it was less than a bag a week!)
There is a foul smell in the kitchen bin, so I’m a bit miserable.. But we ARE drying pumpkinseeds so there will be no cellophane or iffy packaging from THAT! Ha! 🙂
I’m googling recipes for homemade chips as we speak, lol.. There seems to be quite some stuff online, I wonder how long it keeps?
@Sarah: Wowee, what a fabulous story (and another idea for your blog – cleaning your desk with soapnut solution 😉 ) Love all the things you found for free!
@John Costigane: Hi John, we were really pleased with it and if we keep up this level we WILL achieve our target – Christmas will be a challenge!
I need to read Liz’s recent comment. I’ll have a read and let you know what I think. Thanks for the heads up.
@Almost Mrs Average: Thanks Mrs A – you’ve done brilliantly and you have more focus on spreading the word within your community than we do, so this doesn’t always give you time to do everything you might want to regarding your own waste, I’m sure.
@Layla: Hi Layla – yeah – go us! I wonder what the smell in your bin is? Well done on the pumpkin seeds; I’ll be doing that too – how are you drying yours? Air or oven?
Are chips the things we call crisps over here?